"AS A MATTER OF FACT, I DO!"

“AS A MATTER OF FACT, I DO”

 

Opera Expert Herbert Moulton explored

 

By Charles E.J. Moulton

 

 

The young boy was a class clown and his wit amused his classmates just as much as it infuriated the nuns. That day in 1936, the music teacher played an old recording of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” followed by a short description of the storyline. However, the nun pronounced the character name Sparafucile wrong. The nine year old lad at once stood up and said: “Sister, it is pronounced Sparafoocheelay and not Sparafooseele.”

Sardonically, the nun responded: “Well, of course, Herbert. You would know.” The kid grinned: “As a matter of fact, I do! I saw the masterpiece last night in at the Lyric Opera in Chicago!” He marched up to the head of the class and told his friends the entire story.

This little anecdote could serve as a symbol for Herbert’s life. And although he was active in many fields, such as teaching, acting, directing, writing, singing and producing, opera was the red thread that held Herbert Moulton together.

His brave first steps in school musicals brought him joy. Playing the wolf in “Red Riding Hood” or the hero in a high school play made “Air-Bear”, as his buddies called him, join the Chicago Opera Chorus at age 21.

Never a stranger to courage, Herbie made sure that he may stay close to as many stars as he could. Accordingly, he handed Jussi Björling his first beer after the final “Rigoletto” high note. He arranged to serve Set Svanholm a juicy pear after a quartet, to which the Swedish singer responded: “Your Welcome!” His visits in Feruccio Tagliavini’s star lounge were just full of laughs as his irritation was strong at how rude Ezio Pinza pushed him away, while saying: “Out of my way, porco!”

His most memorable story was holding the curtain for Maria Callas as she waited to enter to thank for the applause. Telling her to go out to the audience was answered with a quiet “One moment!” from the diva. He watched her reach out a hand very slowly and display the masses her elegant diamond ring. He awed at her skill as she in slow-motion just stood there without one movement. When she then thanked for the applause, bowing to the stage floor like a silk scarf falling to the ground, her elegance created a passion in Herbert that made the chorister shoot for stardom.

Needless to say, “Air-Bear” was just as riveted as the audience. He became Herbert Moore, the MCA Show Star. He turned into the Off-Broadway-Playwright of The Minstrel Boy. He became the chorus-conductor of The Camp Gordon Chapel Choir at Camp Gordon, Georgia. Their regular radio appearances became renowned across the nation. He was one of the few Americans to headline the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta The Mikado at the Glyndebourne festival. He worked with Michael MacLiommoir and Siobhan MacKenna in Dublin. He produced, wrote and directed his own radio shows in Vienna. He worked with Zsa-Zsa Gabor, David Warner, Alan Rickman, Audrey Landers and Clint Eastwood. He acted in plays by Shakespeare, Dickens, Czechov and O’Neill.

All because of Maria Callas.

And all the time using the excellent timbre of his voice.

Herbert Eyre Moulton’s life reads like the libretto of one of the operas by James Wilson he wrote the texts for. He was a delicious anglo-saxon cocktail. His ancestors were English colonialists and Irish aristocrats. Prominent paternal predecessor were, among others, Betsy Ross, who fabricated the first American flag for George Washington. All the more extraordinary is his Irish family, one whose name Eyre was handed over primarily to the soldier who, reputedly, saved William the Conquerer’s life and “henceforth shall bear the name Eyre for he hath given me the air to breathe”. This all lead up to the teaming-up of France-visiting World War I veteran Herbert Lewis Moulton and aristocrat-heiress and immigrant-daughter Nellie Brennan Eyre. They married and settled down in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. It was a world filled with Irish food and a grammophone playing Irish jigs interrupted by Puccini.

Mother Nell loved opera, but never could remember the names of the stars. Leonard Warren and Richard Tucker, both performers at the Lyric Opera in Chicago where Herbie would work, became Tucker Warren. Father Herbert Lewis Moulton loved opera, because it gave him time off from his strenuous salesman-job to enjoy the company of his wife and son.

Opera and theatre gave way for a passion for theology. Accordingly, four years of study were devoted to a work toward priesthood. But, as soon as mother, father and girlfriend died in that same year of 1958, that vocation turned awry and lost the name of action. Ireland was calling. Herbert’s operatic life now had its’ focus on Grafton Street in Dublin, where he worked on every Irish stage, saw actual ghosts and drank lots of Guiness.

Later on, he would write two brilliant pieces about these years: the novel The Wild Colonial Boy about his time in Ireland and the play The Vocation about his passion for priesthood and eventual decline from the pulpit.

What really signified and put Herbert on the map of theatrical endevour was his vocal skill. If he was singing opera, vocalizing atonal twelve-tone, performing musicals, singing swing, working as a radio announcer or acting in plays: his three octave baritone range and remarkable repertoire gave his audience food for thought. He kept on thrilling audiences until the day he died. Two years before he died, he sang Cesar Franck’s Panis Angelicus in duet with his wife Gun Kronzell �" sitting in a wheelchair.

This nuptial collaboration started in Hanover, Germany in 1966 in a singing studio and last forty years, spanning five musical styles and taking the couple through the cities of twelve countries on two continents.

But what would Herbert’s extraordinary life be without the amusing stories that decorated his life. If his Irish soul was the flour that held the Herbie-Cake together, Opera was the cake itself, acting and universal knowledge created the rest of the ingredients and his writing skills brought the sugar. The operatic wit, however, was the icing.

Touring in Switzerland, he shared a room with a theatre colleague. Herbert listened to an operatic recording of a stage work about Cleopatra on cassette tape in the room. This was obviously too much for his younger friend, whose taste was more contemporary. His colleague walked out of the hotel room into snowy Zurich with the words: “I don’t know about Cleopatra, but it’s bloody well killing me!”

Herbert rushed out, grabbed the angry boy, embraced him and said: “I’m sure Cleopatra would enjoy a Scotch. Even Egypt had popular music. Let’s have a drink.”

Performing Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in front of unwilling students was not Herbert’s idea of fun. It was with gnashing teeth that he acted sensitive scenes with his on-stage son-in-law. Finally, tired of all the noise, he interrupted the scene, turned to the juveniles, saying: “We are trying to act for you, please be quiet!”

Needless to say, after that they were.

His extraordinary collection of operatic LPs and cassettes made him a popular man. His work room was plastered with opera pictures. Anyone visiting the Moulton home was first shown the opera vaults and told the amazing tales of the two opera stars Gun and Herb and how fate had brought them together.

The opera star Herbert Eyre Moulton became a famous Austrian star of commercials at his old age. He was recognized in the sauna as the actor of a TV-clip for commercials.

“As a matter of fact, I do!”

That simple sentence, spoken by a cocky boy at age 9, could serve as a symbol for this man’s life. He was a renaissance man of the highest calibre. One whose years on and off stage here on this Earth was passionate, compassionate, turbulent, chaotic, intellectual, interesting, but first and foremost operatic and loving.

He was brave and fearless, just like characters in the operas he loved to listen to. All through his life, he remained the boy brash enough to tell the teacher that, yes, in fact, he did know more about opera than her. He marched up to more stars than anyone could count. Just like he did at age nine, he would tell the crowds everything he knew.

And the audience would love listening to his story.